UCL Chamber Music Club
Newsletter, No.4, February 2015
In this issue:
Welcome to our newsletter
The Fantastic Voyage:
a film score by Leonard
Rosenman - page 2
Welcome to the fourth issue of the Chamber Music
Club’s Newsletter, a publication which I think is now
well established and plays a valuable part in the life
of the club.
UCOpera presents Amadis
de Gaule by J.C. Bach page 3
Music at the UCL Institute
of Education - page 4
Music Education
2015 - page 7
Expo
Counterpoint No. 3
Found in translation page 9
Meet the committee Dace Ruklisa - page 10
Readers’ letters - page 14
Joyful
Company
of
Singers sings Bach and
Mozart - page 15
LUMINOSO: a short a
cappella programme on
the music of light - page
15
London and the piano in
the Age of Revolutions page 16
Book reviews - Singing
Simpkin and other Bawdy
Jigs: Musical Comedy on
the Shakespearean Stage page 18
The subject-matter of this issue ranges widely,
taking in the Elizabethan theatrical jig, the ‘London
Piano School’ of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, and the music of a classic (or not so classic)
science-fiction film. Also wide-ranging, of course, is
UCL as an institution, and it has recently expanded
further as the Institute of Education has merged with
UCL. We are very pleased, therefore, to include an
article by Jennie Henley from the Institute outlining
some of the internationally important research undertaken by the Music Education Group in the Institute’s Department of Culture, Communication and
Media – research which itself can be called wideranging and which goes far beyond the narrow definition of ‘music education’. An introduction to the
forthcoming Music Education Expo 2015 at the Barbican nicely complements this article. The next in
our ‘Meet the committee’ series is an interview with
Dace Ruklisa; ‘wide-ranging’ is again an appropriate description of Dace’s interests and activities, not
least of which is her role as an editor of the newsletter! My thanks go to her and fellow-editors Helene
Albrecht and Jill House, as well as to all other contributors, for their hard work, commitment and enthusiasm.
So let’s keep it wide-ranging, if not indeed ‘wider
still and wider…’ Please let us have your ideas,
suggestions and offers of material, whether fullyfledged articles or shorter items. Reviews of concerts
and books, information about forthcoming musical
events, and comments on the content of the newsletter are all welcome, as are ‘discussion’ pieces such
as David Miller’s ‘Counterpoints’. Please feel free to
contact Dace (dd.rr.tt@btinternet.com), Helene (helene.albrecht@gmx.net), Jill (j.house@ucl.ac.uk) or
me (rabeemus@gmail.com) at any time. The next issue is due out in October; meanwhile, we hope you
enjoy reading this one.
Roger Beeson, Chair, UCL CMC
The Fantastic Voyage: a film score by Leonard Rosenman
In my 15 years at UCL I have had quite a number of opportunities to be introduced to new music. Among the more unexpected and vivid opportunities was
one that came along back in January 2013 at one of the splendid film nights run
by UCL’s Department of Science and Technology Studies (www.ucl.ac.uk/sts). In
my post-New Year ‘down’ I’d opted for what I thought would be a fun, slightly
campy, if not downright trashy evening of sci-fi schlock in the shape of The Fantastic Voyage (1966). After all, this is a film in which a team of scientists – impossibly square-jawed men and a supremely voluptuous Raquel Welch – clamber
into a mini submarine that is then miniaturised to the nano scale and injected into
the bloodstream of a dying man, all in an effort to save him. With a witty and
energetic introduction to the evening given by UCL’s ever-impressive Professor
Joe Cain what a fine film night this was set to be.
The musical score does not properly begin for some time, until the main characters are injected into the dying man’s body. As the film’s miniaturised protagonists were finding themselves transported to the alien world of the human interior so I found myself being transported to the abstract orchestral sound world of
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and his early twentieth-century contemporaries.
This was not what I had expected, and as the film ran I became increasingly absorbed by the rich drama of the music at the expense of the poor drama on-screen.
This intriguing orchestral music is the work of the New York composer Leonard
Rosenman (1924-2008), previously unknown to me by name, and it came as no
surprise to find he was a pupil not only of Schoenberg, but also of other twentiethcentury musical pioneers Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975) and Roger Sessions (1896 –
1985).
The score for The Fantastic Voyage is notable not only for its large orchestral forces but also the huge range of orchestral colours drawn out by Rosenman
through his application of atonality, serialism, and klangfarben techniques. Unsurprisingly, for many critics the score is cold and unrelentingly sterile, but such
critics would no doubt think this true of so many twentieth-century musical modernists and their disciples.
In his score of The Fantastic Voyage Rosenman’s highly structured compositional techniques produce a rich and appropriately otherworldly soundscape that
feels quite undated, so ubiquitous has the atonal-serial soundscape become in accompanying suspenseful sci-fi material. Indeed, these days a passable pastiche
might be thrown together in no time at all by a talented undergraduate composition student with a laptop. But for Rosenman every note and colour combination
had to be not only imagined in silence (no digital shortcuts for him) but also set
down on paper by hand before the whole could be brought to life by a symphony
orchestra of (I would guess) eighty or so musicians; the real effect unknown until
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finally performed.
This music really is worth searching out. A music CD lifted from the soundtrack of the 35mm reels is available to buy online, and extracts of the film are
numerous on easy-to-access websites such as YouTube (www.youtube.com).
Professor Cain’s film nights continue – in partnership with the UCL Grant
Museum of Zoology – and details can be found at his UCL website
(www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/staff/cain/film).
Andrew Pink
Andrew Pink works as an administrator at UCL. He is an alumnus of the Royal
Academy of Music, London, and of Goldsmiths, University of London.
UCOpera presents Amadis de Gaule by J.C. Bach
Established in 1951, UCOpera is one of the world’s most successful student-led
opera companies, and certainly the most prestigious in the UK. An important directive for the company has always been the staging of rarely performed operas.
This has been successfully achieved throughout the years, with the inclusion of
seventeen British and four World premières in the company’s back catalogue. In
addition, UCOpera has provided the arena in which many young professionals
have been launched into their successful operatic careers.
This year the company presents an English translation of Amadis de Gaule,
a visionary opera by Johann Christian Bach. Written and first performed on the
eve of the French Revolution in Paris, the opera is a chivalric tale of the violent
conflict between love and hate-fuelled revenge. It is set in the ruins of a war-torn
society where no civil structures remain. The opera is staged under the direction
of Jack Furness, who is both the founder of the ambitious and innovative Shadwell
Opera Company, and a Herald Award Winner. The design is by Hannah Wolfe, a
graduate of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
The production features some of today’s most exciting young opera singers, including Royal Academy of Music graduates, Alice Privett and Laurence OlsworthPeter, as well as returning UCOpera soloists, Katherine Blumenthal and Nick Morris. The chorus, orchestra and smaller soloist roles involve over 100 students
from UCL, all under the musical directorship of Charles Peebles, who has conducted virtually every major Spanish orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra,
English Touring Opera, and has served as co-director of the Orkney Conductors’
Course. This is an opera of unflinching intensity, human honesty and visionary
utopianism. The production will be a must-see theatrical event. Performance
dates are the 23rd, 25th, 27th and 28th March, 7.30pm in The Bloomsbury Theatre. Tickets are available from the Bloomsbury Theatre Box Office with prices
ranging from £9 to £25; for tickets see also the website of Bloomsbury Theatre:
www.thebloomsbury.com/event/run/14029.
UCL Chamber Music Club, Newsletter, No.4
3
Music at the UCL Institute of Education
The UCL Institute of Education has a vibrant music research team. The team has
a wide range of experiences and research interests, covering music making across
the lifespan including the social, emotional and health benefits of music making,
music in different social contexts such as criminal justice and conflict areas, and
specific modes of music making including singing, instrumental and performance
work, popular music, creative work and technology. Areas of particular expertise
are singing development and vocal health, music and special educational needs,
music and ageing, innovative pedagogies, music in society, and music technologies. The work of the team has influenced and shaped the fields of sociology of music education, psychology of music, and the intersections of technology, education
and music, for which the University of London offered the first ever lectureship in
the United Kingdom.
The UCL Institute of Education has the largest group of music researchers
based in an education faculty in the UK and Europe. The music team has been
highly active, with 53 projects worth a total of £3m to the IoE since 2005. External
funders include UK research councils (Economic and Social Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research
Council), European funding from the European Social Fund and EC Framework 7,
major charities such as Esmée Fairbairn, Paul Hamlyn, Youth Music, RNIB, Amber
Trust, Central Government (Department for Children, Schools and Families), local authorities (Newham, Liverpool, Greater London Authority) and other organisations (for example, European Concert Hall Organisation, London Symphony
Orchestra, Opera North, The Sage Gateshead).
The team comprises Professor Graham Welch (Chair of Music Education), Professor Lucy Green (Professor of Music Education), Dr Andrea Creech (Reader in
Education), Dr Evangelos Himonides (Reader in Technology, Education and Music), Dr Jennie Henley (Lecturer in Music Education), Kate Laurence (Lecturer in
Music Education) and Dr Jo Saunders (Lecturer in Music Education). Working
alongside the academic staff are over fifty research assistants, post-doctoral researchers and doctoral researchers. The academic staff are members of the International Music Education Research Centre (iMerc, www.imerc.org), a crossinstitutional research centre that connects researchers and champions music education and music education research across the globe.
Other ongoing projects include three-year evaluations of whole class schoolbased instrumental learning in Leeds and Newcastle (‘In Harmony’), as well as a
recently completed two-year evaluation in East London invoking 10,000 children
(‘Every Child a Musician’). The research team has just begun a ten-year evaluation
of the wider impact of instrumental learning across all secondary schools in Islington (‘Music in Secondary Schools Trust’). We are also involved in a major study
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of early childhood musical experience and musical development in Australia, ECfunded projects on music and maths, and singing cultures. Professor Welch has
just been invited to chair the expert commission on developing music education
in the UK, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Information on all of these projects, and full staff profiles can be found on
www.imerc.org, while a few project highlights are presented here.
Music for life: promoting well-being in older people
through musical activities in the community
This project was led by Andrea Creech and explored the role of music in older
people’s lives and how participation in making music, particularly in community
settings, can enhance their social, emotional and cognitive well-being. The UK
is experiencing a new demographic: the over-65s population outnumbers those
under the age of 16. This requires greater focus on the well-being of older people.
Earlier studies on the role of music (predominantly singing) in older people’s lives
show its ability to enhance health and well-being and combat isolation, loneliness
and depression.
Therefore, the ‘Music for Life’ project, a partnership between the Institute of
Education, University of London, the Sage Gateshead, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama ‘Connect’ project, and the Music Department of the Westminster
Adult Education Service, looked at the role of a range of musical activities in the
lives of older people. The project is funded under the ‘New Dynamics of Ageing’
programme, an eight-year multidisciplinary research initiative aimed at improving the quality of life for older people in the UK. The project is a collaboration between five of the UK Research Councils (Economic and Social Research Council,
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Medical Research Council and Arts and Humanities
Research Council) and is the largest and most ambitious research programme in
ageing ever seen in the UK.
The research was carried out between 2009 and 2011. It comprised 349 cases
(older people participating in music activities, among them 29% beginners) and
102 controls (older people participating in non-music activities) aged between 50
and 93. 77% of research participants identified as White British and 76% were
female. The study methods included a questionnaire completed before and after
9 months participation in music or alternative activities by both case and control
groups, and also interviews, focus groups and observations carried out with music
participants and their facilitators. Quality of life was measured by CASP-12; Basic
Needs Scales.
It was found that measures of well-being were consistently higher among the
older people (including beginners) participating in music activities compared to
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5
those (from the control group) participating in other activities.
The full research briefing can be found at www.ioe.ac.uk/research/97826.html
and the book can be found at ioepress.co.uk/books/art-and-music/active-ageingwith-music/.
Bringing informal learning into classrooms
In terms of impact, our research is far-reaching. For example, Lucy Green’s research led to the development of a new classroom pedagogy that has been adopted
by the ‘Musical Futures’ model of learning (www.musicalfutures.org) and has a
global reach. The pedagogy is based on findings from an investigation into the
way popular musicians learn. The main principles of the pedagogy are:
• learning by ear and the fact that notation should not always be the starting
point;
• the involvement of the students working together on their musical preferences and being responsible for their own learning;
• learning through the integration of listening, performing and composing
rather than treating these activities separately;
• how all these help to bridge the gap between school and outside school music.
Lucy’s work has influenced classroom practice and curriculum development
in many different countries.
In the UK over 1,500 schools are incorporating the ‘Musical Futures’ informal
learning model into their practice. The model has been a part of the Postgraduate
Certificate of Education (PGCE) course at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music
and Dance since 2006, and the University of Wales at Cardiff since 2011. It was
rolled out into schools in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland during 2012.
In Australia ‘Musical Futures’ is supported by Australia’s own Musical Futures website (musicteachersnetwork.ning.com/group/musical-futures-australia).
The informal learning model is being incorporated across a range of both primary
and secondary schools, and teacher education courses.
In Brazil the work inspired a collaborative research project between the Federal University of Bahia and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. A network of schools, co-ordinated by the University of Brasilia and the University of
Minas Gerais, are adopting the model, and the Open University of Brazil is piloting
it as a teacher-training unit. It was piloted in 2012 in state schools in the cities of
Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Vitória and São Paulo.
In Canada the Canadian Music Educators’ Association has also set up its own
Musical Futures website (musicalfuturescanada.org). Nine delegates from the As6
UCL Chamber Music Club, Newsletter, No.4
sociation visited England to undertake ‘Musical Futures’ training, and set it up on
their return. The Simon Fraser University Centre for Research in Youth, Music and
Education (rymeyouth.com) is replicating and incorporating the informal learning
model into a research project on Youth Participatory Action Research.
In China the informal learning model has been tested in Chongquin Province.
A book by Lucy Green, Hear, Listen, Play! (2014), bringing together the classroom,
ensemble and instrumental tuition strands of the work, is being translated into
Chinese. The Board of Education of Chongquin Province are planning to incorporate the informal learning model into the curriculum and to train teachers in how
to implement it.
In Cyprus the new National Curriculum for Music includes informal learning
practices. It stresses the most important principles of Lucy’s theory.
In Greece the Ionian University ran a four-day course for participants from
all over Greece on implementing informal learning methods into classrooms and
instrumental tuition in July 2014. The book Hear, Listen, Play! has just been translated into Greek.
In Singapore ‘Musical Futures’ is being phased into schools and teacher education. In preparation for this, a group of delegates from different government
agencies visited the England for ‘Musical Futures’ training and a meeting at the
Institute in March 2012. The model has now been piloted in five schools and is
currently being rolled-out to more schools.
In Uganda three organisations are in the process of setting up a project to work
with music teachers using the Hear, Listen, Play! informal and aural learning pedagogy and materials. These are Sound Foundation (www.soundfoundation.org), the
Kampala Music School (kampalamusicschool.com) and Bayimba Cultural Foundation (www.bayimba.org).
Jennie Henley
Music Education Expo 2015 –
the UK’s largest exhibition and professional development
conference for music education
Given the recent merger of UCL and the Institute of Education, the upcoming conference on music education at the Barbican might be of interest to students and
staff, given the diversity and range of the Institute’s research into music education. Furthermore, the exhibition might also attract musicians from a variety of
backgrounds as it explores the broad societal relevance of music-making, be it as a
crime deterrent, a subject of scientific research or an important learning tool. Visitors to the exhibition will also find music books, scores, journals and instruments,
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and plenty of opportunities to chat and to debate with professionals and amateur
enthusiasts alike.
As in previous years the lectures and talks are held in two so-called seminar theatres, the Rhinegold Theatre and a workshop space. The seminar theatres
provide a platform for experts who are concerned with practical aspects of music teaching. These may comprise legal matters affecting professionals who often
operate in ill-defined work environments bridging private and public sectors. Innovative solutions are presented by the Reading-based charity ‘Readipop’, which
provides open-access orchestra projects in urban areas, and by the independent
organisation ‘Musical Futures’ (whose pedagogical profile has grown out of the
IoE’s research), which will be looking at crowd-funded innovation.
Most seminars, though, are concerned with social aspects of contemporary
music education and thereby increasingly explore global perspectives. The British
artist James Pinchen will introduce ‘Music education as a crime deterrent’, a model
that he has developed in Mexico in cooperation with young drug addicts and which
may have potential for future applications here in the UK. Lidia Bajkowska will
present ‘A Pedagogy of fun’, a new way of learning to play the piano that was
developed in Poland and is currently promoted by UNICEF. The benefits of the
Kodály method for autistic children and people with communication difficulties
will be presented by Andrew Haveron and supplemented by Jill Bradford in a
session on ‘Music for Autism International’, the latter being a US-based charity
dedicated to providing financial assistance for services to children with autism
throughout the world. Other presentations include the use of technology in the
classroom, composition through improvisation, simultaneous learning, and musical progression and the role of assessment. The research will be presented by both
established and internationally renowned British experts, such as Paul Harris, and
newcomers to the stage, for instance the Turin-based Istituto Mod.A.I which studies physiology in artistic performance in order to ‘bridge the traditional gaps between artists and scientists that are due to a scarcity of studies and continuous
misunderstandings’.
In contrast, the Rhinegold Theatre hosts politicians, representatives of the
BBC, Ofsted and other cultural and educational bodies who discuss pedagogical
concepts, funding and organisational matters and a ‘common future’ for a diversified and complex landscape of music education in the UK. In the year of Britain’s
general elections the audience will be offered question and answer sessions with
both Schools Minister Nick Gibb and Shadow Schools Minister Kevin Brennan.
Furthermore, the Music Education Council will discuss new GCSEs, AS Levels and
A Levels, and the National Plan for Music Education, implemented three years ago,
will be debated with a particular view on potential relevance for a Plan B.
Those who visited last year’s Music Expo will remember the activity sessions
that turned visitors into multi-percussionists and skilled vocalists; moments of
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great fun under the guidance of high profile musicians and artists. This year workshop attendees will be invited to experience the beauty and educational value of
gamelan music, hip-hop and Indo Afro Samba in interactive demonstrations; furthermore their senses will be stimulated by musical performers, including a plastic
brass ensemble and the British singing group ‘8voces’. The latter enjoys a worldwide reputation based on a repertoire ranging from Renaissance polyphony to
commissioned contemporary works.
The exhibition will take place on the 12 & 13 March between 9.30am and 5pm
in the Barbican Exhibition Hall 2. Free tickets and a draft programme are available
on the Music Expo’s website www.musiceducationexpo.co.uk.
Helene Albrecht
Counterpoint No. 3 – Found in translation
A couple of years ago, after a student sang a setting of a German poem at a Chamber Music Club concert, accompanied on the piano by its composer (another student), I asked the singer what the text said, because my German (and his diction)
were not clear enough for me to understand the words. His reply was that the
composer had told him: ‘it was something or another about love’. I was indignant
and tried to remind him that, to be worth writing or performing, a song should
be about the content of the text. In this case the composer had effectively confessed that the content of the poem had not inspired his music in the way that
we believe poems have inspired Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Brahms, Wolf and
Tchaikovsky. But for most English audiences, even at UCL, foreign texts are usually quite opaque.
Our best practice has always been to provide the audience with the original text and an English translation side by side, ideally on the back of the programme. In my experience the table facility in my favourite word-processing program can be used to give the right format.
I have always found that trying to do the translation for myself has made
me think hard before performance about what a song really means. If I cannot
make my own translation there are two sources of ‘cribs’ which can be used. One
may rip off the translation given in the sleeve notes of a recording. For French
and German there are various books containing useful translations, with authors
including Richard Stokes, Lois Philips and Pierre Bernac. And for biblical texts,
such as Brahms’s Four Serious Songs, and for quite a lot of liturgical music, it is
sensible to print a recognised English version of the particular verses being sung.
It is interesting to see how many more or fewer words are used in each language
for the same text. I recollect that Martin Luther is rarely as concise as the English
Revised Version.
DJM
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Meet the committee - Dace Ruklisa
applied mathematician, computational biologist and occasional composer
Helene Albrecht: Dace, you joined UCL Chamber Music Club in 2012 and very soon
became a member of the committee. What were your affiliations with UCL at this
time?
Dace Ruklisa: I came to UCL as a postdoc to work in a small group of mathematicians solving problems in genetics. My aim was to develop statistical methods
that could be used to interpret novel genetic variants and in particular their role in
the development of a disease. I was collaborating with Royal Brompton Hospital
and the methods were applied to their collections of data related to heart disease.
HA: Within the Chamber Music Club’s committee you have adopted several functions: you are running the Baroque list, you helped to set up and are one of the editors
of the club’s newsletter and soon you will be in charge of a concert programme entirely dedicated to contemporary chamber music. The latter relates to the fact that
you are also a composer and have presented your own works on three occasions to
the club. I would like to learn a bit more about each activity. How did the Baroque
section come into life and what are current experiences of this group?
DR: Involvement with Baroque musicians at UCL came as a surprise to me.
One of my first tasks after joining the committee was to organise the annual new
members’/new performers’ concert (it is a tradition within the club to hold a concert where recent members make their debut at UCL). When I began to arrange a
programme I browsed the membership players’ list in order to collect the names
of new members, and suddenly noticed that there are a few players of early music instruments among them. Then I wrote a call for performers encouraging the
forming of Baroque ensembles. A number of Baroque instrumentalists responded
and, seeing their count and enthusiasm growing, suggested establishing a dedicated mailing list that would make it easier to arrange ensembles.
Currently the Baroque group has sixteen members. All sorts of instruments
and voices are represented – soprano and countertenor, different types of recorders,
crumhorn, bassoon, baroque cello, viola da gamba and harpsichord. I am very glad
that a couple of new members have joined it recently and it seems that it is sufficiently straightforward to find us. I see this mailing list as a useful infrastructure
that makes communication between like-minded musicians easier. It would be
quite a difficult task for a new member of the club, not too familiar with UCL, to
search for Baroque players within the university. I hope that CMC members find
a good company for rehearsing and performing Baroque music here.
HA: Can you tell us a bit more about your activities as composer? Where did
you study composition and who have been or are the most influential personalities
for your personal development?
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DR: I have studied composition with two teachers, both very important for
evolving of compositional technique and approach towards writing. The first of
them was Maija Einfelde – she taught me a lot about the development of material
and laid the foundations of technique. She emphasized that whatever the theme,
musical material or structure of a piece is, there has to be an internal logic according to which musical ideas follow one another. I learned a lot from her sense of
time and length in music as well. My collaboration with the second composition
teacher, Imants Mežaraups, was shorter, but also memorable. He had studied engineering before turning to music, thus we shared a passion for inventing various
structures within music and a keen interest in the architecture of a piece. His insight and advice regarding the orchestration was very valuable and his openness
towards various genres and styles in music was remarkable.
HA: You have a background in natural sciences; would you say that this fact does
have an impact on your compositional style and musical language?
DR: My role as a scientist is to formalise fuzzy areas of knowledge, to build
mathematical models for various biological phenomena and to provide algorithms
that could be used to mine and interpret large data sets, especially genetic data. I
like to bring structure and formalisms to a research field in a way that would enable understanding of empirical observations and looking at things in a dynamical
way, e.g. predicting outcomes and behaviours. I think that my role as a composer
is similar – I am structuring and formalising fuzzy knowledge and intuitions. But
here the object of formalisation is something unrelated to natural sciences. Sometimes it is my outlook on the musical past. Occasionally I feel like a librarian who
has accidentally ended up in the labyrinths of music.
I find that the presence of time is absolutely necessary in music – after all
music is more intrinsically linked to time than other arts. True, sense of time is
also crucial in theatre, especially in a comedy that can be ruined by ill-balanced
tempo relationships. At the beginning of my work on a composition I draw graphic
diagrams adorned with verbal comments that purport to capture how I see the
whole piece. I also draw diagrams when I try to understand how a poem or a
set of poems could be translated into music and what is the internal logic and
dynamic of a literary text. This process yields the main principles of texture and
instrumentation and also the choice of playing techniques and types of sounds
used in the piece. When writing a score I often ask where the current material can
lead and what potential or limitations it entails. The texture of my compositions is
usually transparent; however, it can be multi-layered at the same time – a vague
resemblance to reading and writing concise mathematical texts.
HA: What role does chamber music play in your own work?
DR: Everything that I am composing at the moment is related to chamber
music, therefore a myriad links exist between my experience as a listener and a
participant in chamber musical activities and a composer. I am currently writing a
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song cycle based on the poems of French surrealist writer Paul Éluard; it is scored
for mezzo-soprano, guitar, accordion and double bass, and has roots both in avantgarde jazz and in contemporary sound-based instrumental writing. I would also
like to finish a piano trio – it is a lengthy procession from one group of people
to another in an endless social gathering, with some inspiration drawn from Luis
Buñuel and Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie. And my wind quintet is awaiting
the final instrumentation – it deals with historical memory and with Cambridge
gardens in the dark.
To me both playing of and listening to chamber music means concentration
and also establishing of a focus. The same is true for studying scores of other composers (at this moment a number of scores by Mark-Anthony Turnage reside on
my desk). There are parallels with concentrating in order to develop a mathematical formalism or with an intense revising of a scientific text, where you relentlessly
follow the development and attentively absorb details.
I prefer to listen to chamber music that exhibits some distance from the piece
I am composing at the time and does not interfere either with the intonation or
atmosphere of it. Then I can properly appreciate and dissect sounding material
and occasionally borrow some principles of music-making, like an approach towards timbre or texture or some musical gestures. In my experience music-making
principles can travel quite freely between genres and styles and instruments used,
yielding unpredictable associations and parallels. I cannot listen to music while
reading a pure mathematics book – somehow it absorbs all my attention and the
outside world tends to vanish during this process.
HA: Please tell us about your aspirations regarding the newsletter. You have
written reviews on annual programmes and given an illuminating account of contemporary performance practices shared between composers and performers. What
general developments have you experienced in the editing of the first three editions
of the newsletter and what can we expect from its proceeding in the future?
DR: The most obvious development for the newsletter is the increase in the
number of pages with each successive issue. More and more people are getting involved in the making of the newsletter as authors of articles and are bringing new
themes and new expertise with them. An average member of the Chamber Music
Club is a rather erudite person having plenty of experience in a few fields of music. For example, we have experts in early music for wind instruments, versatile
singers familiar with vocal repertoire ranging from Renaissance to contemporary
music, people carrying vast knowledge of Baroque music and several musicologists within our ranks. As an editor I am trying to notice this potential and to
bring this experience to the spotlight. I myself am learning a lot from CMC members, also as a composer.
Several regular columns have been established over time: interviews, counterpoints of strong opinions about chamber music and an annual review of club’s
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concerts.
The most important future plan is to enhance the diversity of views on chamber music represented in the newsletter. I would also like to continue several
strands of thematically linked articles. It would be nice to keep exploring eighteenthcentury music and have more notes on historical musicology. I am planning to
write some articles in which chamber music by more recent composers is analysed, e.g. works by Elisabeth Lutyens and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Editors of
the newsletter are regularly inviting committee members to write articles related
to the themed concerts they are organising – this practice has yielded interesting
contributions, like an overview of diverse ways in which composers pay tribute to
other composers in their music. There is a space for some more theoretical articles
and music-related research within the newsletter – I hope that these themes will
develop in future.
HA: Dace, since July 2014 you have accepted a position at the University of Cambridge; will this new post allow for future participation in the UCL Chamber Music
Club’s activities and how do you reconcile scientific work with musical activities?
DR: My new research post in Cambridge means that I am less present at UCL.
Thus I am currently organising one concert per year. However, it is well known
that limited resources can enhance non-standard solutions (think about a costume
designer in a theatre lacking budget – of course, something will be invented with
the items at hand). At the moment I am considering several themed programmes.
In the end of March there will be a concert entirely dedicated to contemporary
music – it looks like the range of styles will be quite broad and also touch upon
several non-classical genres of music. It will be a pleasure to arrange these pieces
in a linear sequence. It would be very interesting to organise a concert in a UCL
space that has specific acoustics or shape. Potential collaborations with visual
artists residing at UCL could be considered in order to create more integrative art
forms, including new compositions.
HA: Finally, please tell us what your most enjoyable experiences have been as a
member of the UCL CMC?
DR: The most enjoyable moments happen when all pieces in a programme
merge in a more extended structure and when a concert has both a chemistry of
a potent theatrical play and a solid architecture of a large-scale composition. One
of such occasions took place on the evening of a concert dedicated to the First
World War and entirely comprised of compositions written in 1914 – it was impossible to sit quietly when all those contrasts and piano cascades poured over the
audience. Equally memorable albeit very different in nature was a performance
of Corelli’s Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 8 – the phrasing, the interplay between
musicians, subtlety and musicality were notable. And then there was the rarely
played cantata The School of Anacreon by Thomas Arne – such a joy radiated from
the performance, which at the same time was well controlled. The recent rendiUCL Chamber Music Club, Newsletter, No.4
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tion of Beethoven’s variations for cello and piano (Twelve Variations for cello and
piano on ‘See the conqu’ring hero comes’ from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus) was
delightful: vivid images and precision of dynamics, unexpected turns and playfulness within a leisurely sense of time.
HA: Thank you, Dace for this most inspiring conversation.
Readers’ letters
Comment on Counterpoint No.1 in the third edition of CMC Newsletter,
October 2014
The new series of ‘counterpoints’ introduces a fresh and inspirational platform for
debates on classical music that for a long time seemed to have disappeared from
wider public radars. In this context please allow me some comments on the finding that folk tunes should not belong to the Chamber Music Club’s performance
repertoire. As the author of the counterpoint rightly remarks, folk tunes are essential building blocks of many famous works of the Western classical tradition.
Think of Glazunov’s, Vaughan Williams’s and even Brahms’s major symphonic
works without the incorporation of folkloristic material; they would possibly lack
essential parts of their raison d’être. The same is true for countless chamber music
works from Schubert’s Variations on an original theme in A flat D.813 to Vaughan
Williams’s First String Quartet in G minor. Composers throughout the centuries
have been keen to collect folk songs and to understand and process their particularities, among those Beethoven, Brahms, Elgar, Kodály and Bartók; as Alfred
Einstein writes in his Music in the Romantic Era: A History of Musical Thought
in the 19th Century (1947): ‘the collecting and sifting of old traditional melodic
treasures.. formed the basis for a creative art-music’. Enjoying chamber music
in our times touches upon yet another dimension: the pleasure of disclosing and
understanding concepts. For many good reasons we have developed a passion for
comprehending people’s mind set, to notice the evolution of creative processes and
to appreciate the development from and interconnection of basic and fundamental expressions to complex and sophisticated constructions of the human mind.
Furthermore, without an appreciation of the folk song it would be impossible to
provide meaningful access to the abundant wealth of musical treasures for future
generations. Given the broad cultural background from UCL’s intake of students
the occasional performance of folk songs in chamber music concerts alongside an
ever-widening repertoire, not necessarily restricted to the Western classical tradition, would represent a true asset to the club’s activities.
Helene Albrecht
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LUMINOSO:
a short a cappella programme on the music of light
Thursday, March 5, 2015, 6.30pm at the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QE.
The subject of light – in all its manifestations – has been inspirational for
composers for centuries. Collegium Musicum of London has created a short programme of celestial a cappella harmonies for a spring evening of illuminated musicmaking this March, featuring works by Lassus, Tallis, Bruch, Elgar, Stanford, Sullivan, Parry and Whitacre together with a few popular surprises.
The fourth in a series of hour-long, drive-time concerts at its home in Clerkenwell, LUMINOSO represents an opportunity to experience London’s liveliest chamber choir over a free glass of wine, and complete your evening with a delicious meal
at one of Exmouth Market’s excellent eateries.
Fresh from its success last November, with its Masters of Baroque programme
at St James’s in Piccadilly, the choir looks forward to welcoming you for a dazzling
evening of choral favourites from four centuries.
Tickets are £10 from www.coll-mus-lon.org.uk/index.php?page=future or on
the door.
A second LUMINOSO concert will take place on Thursday, 6 April, 6pm, at
The Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, Savoy Hill, Strand, London WC2 0DA.
Joyful Company of Singers sings Bach and Mozart
‘It was a great experience marked by nigh impeccable balance of forces: a very
well-trained chorus as crisp as the orchestra, beautiful phrasing and clear diction
even in most of the very agitated crowd sequences.’ Time of Malta
Following a highly acclaimed St John Passion with The Orchestra of the Age
of Enlightenment at the Valletta Baroque Festival in Malta earlier this year, Joyful
Company of Singers returns to Holborn and St Sepulchre on Saturday 7 March
with a programme of motets by J.S. Bach, Josef Rheinberger’s Mass in E flat major, and a transcription of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3 for viola played by Takashi
Kikuchi. Please note starting time of 7pm. Tickets and more details on www.jcos.co.uk.
On 27 March Joyful Company of Singers moves to St Martin-in-the-Fields for
Mozart’s Te Deum in C and Requiem – as part of the Brandenburg Festival series
and by candlelight! For tickets and further details see www.brandenburg.org.uk.
UCL Chamber Music Club, Newsletter, No.4
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London and the piano in the Age of Revolutions¹
The pianoforte came of age during the Age of Revolutions, 1776-1848, and created
its own revolution in music. For most of these years Vienna was unequalled as
a musical centre, but London had its own piano school, and when the pianistcomposer Muzio Clementi died in 1832 he was buried in Westminster Abbey with
the epitaph ‘the father of the pianoforte in England’. By contrast, fifty years earlier,
in 1782, Johann Christian Bach, arguably the first founder of the pianoforte in
England, was buried in a pauper’s grave in London’s Old St Pancras churchyard.
Clementi, composer, pianist, teacher, music publisher and piano manufacturer, deserved his accolade but he owed much to his predecessor, Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782). It is easy to overlook the contribution of the London Bach
who came to London in 1762 to write operas, but he was the first professional musician publicly to perform in London on the pianoforte; this was not as an act of
showmanship but to demonstrate the piano’s potentialities as a solo instrument in
the concert hall. It was an act worthy of his father, J.S. Bach, a fine clavichordist,
and of his brother, C.P.E. Bach, who delighted in the pianoforte. J.C. Bach’s operas
did not put London’s Haymarket Theatre on the map, and he ran into debt when
he and Karl Abel promoted chamber music in their Hanover Square Music Rooms,
but his scores of chamber music are excellent – melodic in the galant style and
innovative – he was one of the first in London to use the new clarinet, and like
Arcangelo Corelli he used loud and soft to give added drama. Amateur consorts
prized his works as they were less complex than the baroque, contrapuntal style
of his father. His family training gave J.C. Bach an introduction to London pianoforte makers – the Swiss, Burkat Shudi, and his son-in-law, John Broadwood,
who manufactured pianos after 1761, and the German immigrant, Johann Zumpe,
famed for his square pianos with their simple mechanism (being a friend of J.S.
Bach he made the son his agent).
J.S. Bach taught his sons that the cantabile style eminently suited the clavichord and J.C. Bach’s surviving piano sonatas, Op. 5 and Op. 17, each a set of six
sonatas, bear this out. Queen Charlotte made him the royal music master and gave
his widow a pension, and Mozart, who studied with him as a child in London, became J.C. Bach’s lifelong friend. In remembrance he composed his piano concerto
KV 106 by transposing Nos. 2, 3 and 4 of J.C. Bach’s Op. 5 piano sonatas.
¹Composers for the pianoforte active in London after 1766 were well known musicians, but it
was only in 1970 that the musicologist Alexander Ringer coined the term ‘the London pianoforte
school’. However, his article in the Musical Quarterly, 1970, No. 4, was more concerned to point
out the interest taken by Beethoven in the London piano school than to discuss the wider influence
of London-based composers. In the twentieth volume of The London Pianoforte School, 1766-1860,
New York, Garland Press, 1984-7, the editor Nicholas Temperley made a definitive collection of the
work of these musicians, giving musicologists a wealth of information to carry forward discussion
of the London pianoforte school.
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Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) soon succeeded the London Bach. He was no
migrant Italian musician – instead his father, a silversmith in Rome, ‘sold’ him
as a boy to the wealthy West Indian, Peter Beckford, then on the Grand Tour,
who took him to his home in Dorset where he remained for seven years practising on the harpsichord. Beckford was known only for his love of hunting but
may have expected Clementi to teach his future wife, Louisa Pitt, and his cousin,
young William Beckford, in nearby Wiltshire. Clementi’s apprenticeship ended in
1773 and he left for London when Beckford accused him of seducing Louisa. He
dedicated his Op. 1 sonatas to Beckford to secure West Indian pupils in London,
but they never spoke again. Gossip about homosexuality and adultery destroyed
this London Creole circle which included Matthew Gregory Lewis and his mother,
and Clementi left on a European tour in 1780. Mozart hated him when they met
in Vienna at their famous duel, seeing Clementi as an unworthy rival of J.C. Bach,
for Clementi was said to be a harsh teacher and an obsessive miser – the years in
Dorset did not teach him to be kind.
His piano sonatas, most written in the 1770s and 1780s, are in the classical
style, as melodic as J.C. Bach’s but less mature than those of Haydn, and show the
influence of Domenico Scarlatti whose works he studied as a harpsichordist. In the
1790s the French Revolution sent a flood of refugees to Britain and a generation
of travelling pianist-composers delighted London. They included J.L. Dussek, Ignaz Pleyel and Clementi’s best students: J.N. Hummel, who noted Clementi’s fine
legato playing and faultless technique, J.B. Cramer, thought to be the finest pianist
in Europe, and the Irishman, John Field, who as a boy demonstrated Clementi’s
pianos. Acknowledging their skill, Clementi stopped performing and composed
little after 1800 save for his Gradus ad Parnassum – exercises in technique for the
student which became as popular as his Op. 36 sonatas for beginners. He became
a travelling salesman and impresario promoting his own pianofortes, but his reputation lived on in his students, who by the 1820s included Ignaz Moscheles, who almost succeeded in getting Felix Mendelssohn to live in London (instead Moscheles
followed Mendelssohn to Leipzig, a rival centre for music). His students as pianists
and composers helped develop the instrument’s range, and discovered how well
short lyrical pieces suited the piano. Their influence spread to Paris, home after
1830 to the pianist composers Frederick Kalkbrenner and Frédéric Chopin.
The Paris piano school soon set its own standards, seen when a dispute broke
out between Field and Chopin. The latter was unimpressed when he heard Field
play at the Salle Pleyel in 1832, and Field was as disparaging, but their quarrel was
not over their skill as pianists but over the Nocturne – a short, lyric piano solo.
Field, the creator of the form, published his first nocturne in 1812; fifteen more,
the bulk of his musical output, followed, and the form quickly became popular.
Chopin composed his first nocturne in 1827. One view is that Field was inspired
by childhood memories of harp music for the hours of prayer after midnight. Both
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his piano concertos follow classical form and have slow middle movements that
are as short and lyrical as his nocturnes, if with a tendency to over-embellish –
the fault of bel canto opera singers – one reason for Chopin, who liked opera, to
disparage Field.
However, Field did not invent the piano miniature: J.S. Bach’s 48 Preludes,
Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Schubert’s Impromptus, Clementi’s Studies among others
established the form. But the nocturne was in a new Romantic idiom, free and
lyrical. It quickly became popular but had critics, mostly opponents of Chopin
like Ludwig Rellstab (in the wake of the dispute between Field and Chopin he
nicknamed Beethoven’s early piano sonata, Op. 27, No. 2 ‘The Moonlight’). He
had supporters: Moscheles felt the nocturne was full of ‘morbid moanings’ and
called one of his 1837 Characteristic Studies ‘Moonlight on the seashore’; in 1838
Robert Schumann called his little night piece Träumerei; Felix Mendelssohn and
Edvard Grieg do not include nocturnes in their lyric pieces, with an exception of
Grieg’s No. 4 of Op. 54.
Chopin’s études and preludes surpassed compositions by the London school,
and influenced later Romantic composers. He used the piano to good advantage
in his polonaises to champion Polish nationalism; his waltzes and mazurkas were
as popular as his nocturnes – a reminder that he owed something to Field, whose
nocturnes, a pioneering work, are a legacy of the old London piano school.
Clare Taylor Autumn 2014
Book reviews
Clegg, R. and Skeaping, L. (2014) Singing Simpkin and other Bawdy Jigs: Musical Comedy on the Shakespearean Stage, University of Exeter Press
In March 2013 the Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society held a Study Forum at Goldsmith’s College at which Lucie Skeaping and Roger Clegg presented a paper and
workshop on the material contained in their soon to be published book Singing
Simpkin and other Bawdy Jigs. Their presentation and workshop was entitled ‘Recuperating the Song-and-Dance Comedies on the Shakespearean Stage’ and the
present reviewer was honoured to have been asked to help with some musicmaking, by playing pipe and tabor alongside Lucie Skeaping’s violin – perhaps in
somewhat feeble imitation of Richard Tarleton, the great sixteenth-century comedian. Later Lucie presented the work as a talk at the Institute of Musical Research
at Senate House. Having now read the text and attempted to implement the ideas
in the creation of a ‘jig’ for a recent Mummers Festival performance in Gloucester
in 2014 the present reviewer is confident in his assertion that the subject is deserving of serious consideration and that the re-creation of a successful jig is by
no means a trivial or easy task.
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The trouble with some words is that they can mean many different things. An
example is the word ‘jig’, which can denote a dance, a musical form, a contraption
for holding a piece of wood or metal for working on, etc., etc.. This ambiguity has
bedevilled our understanding of what it means in the context of theatre. Even there
it can have several connotations, including that of a dance for the whole company
at the end of the play (such a dance frequently ends a production at Shakespeare’s
Globe Theatre in present-day London; examples of it can be seen on YouTube) or
a simple dance to accompany a song.
In the book reviewed here, however, it has a rather specific meaning: in the
Elizabethan theatre it was a common practice for the comedians to put together
a short playlet, usually on some bawdy theme, composed entirely of songs and
accompanying dances. This was the ‘jig’ that frequently followed the main play
in the Globe of Shakespeare’s time (and was quite different from what can be seen
there today).
The texts of these playlets, for which relatively few complete scripts survive,
were collected and analysed in exhaustive detail several decades ago in Charles
Read Baskervill’s magisterial (though rather indigestible) volume The Elizabethan
Jig. Yet despite its attempt to collect all the available material that remained of
this somewhat ephemeral art form, it failed to provide any working model from
which the jigs themselves might be re-created, for there was no attempt to include
the music or any plausible indication of choreography for the dances.
The present volume by Roger Clegg and Lucie Skeaping attempts to make
amends for this by giving well-reasoned suggestions for tunes that might have
been used for the sung dialogue, along with indications as to what dances from
those known to be current at that time might be suitable to accompany the action. Lucie Skeaping is well-known for her work on the popular street songs of
seventeenth-century England (Broadside Ballads, published by Faber), and Anne
Daye, who served as the book’s dance consultant, is a recognised authority on the
contemporary dance forms. The result is intended to provide a text, together with
musical ‘score’ and choreographic advice from which a plausible recreation of the
Elizabethan stage jig may be made. To what extent it is successful in this aim will
only become apparent when theatre companies attempt to use it to produce real
stage works. At present we have so little experience of this that it is very difficult
even to get a general idea of what such a reconstruction might look like. Lucie’s
own company, The City Waits, has produced several entertaining examples, while
a student group from Exeter that I believe is associated with her co-author Roger
Clegg has recorded a version viewable on YouTube that gives a rough idea of what
a ‘stage jig’ might have looked like. But from these rare examples it is difficult
to gain any serious insight into what must have been in Shakespeare’s time an
all-pervasive form of theatre. The famous clowns of that period – Richard Tarlton,
Will Kemp, and others – were known to have been expert in the creation and perUCL Chamber Music Club, Newsletter, No.4
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formance of jigs (although Kemp’s famous ‘jig’ from London to Norwich clearly
does not fall into the category of ‘stage jig’). But what they did exactly is much
more difficult to ascertain.
As a blueprint and guide for the creation or re-creation of the stage jig, however, the book is invaluable. Its suggestions for tunes are based largely on the
rhythmic or metrical structure of the song texts, along with plausible narrative
associations. From these it is possible to make a guess as to the original tune
that may have been employed. Tunes were not of course unique to a particular
song-text, but were used and re-used for many different ballads. The links to specific dance choreographies or dance types are, however, somewhat more tenuous.
While we know the form of many of the contemporary dance types – courante,
almain, galliard, etc. – and even the detailed choreographies of several that may
have been current, this knowledge is primarily limited to the ‘social’ dances that
were practised by the upper classes, even when performed in a theatrical context.
What we do not know is how the comedians themselves danced, for this may well
have been a performance of a much more elaborate and virtuosic nature. Contemporary accounts indicate that such actors were as renowned for their gymnastic
feats as for their verbal dexterity and we can be certain that the jig provided the
perfect vehicle for the display of such talent.
The book makes some suggestions as to the link between the stage jig and
other minor theatrical forms, such as the droll, the folk play, the morris, or the
pantomime. A ballad opera like John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera might also be viewed
as an extended stage jig. The simple formula of taking some existing tunes and
writing words to fit a new narrative is both appealing and plausible. Why bother
to try to invent new ones if tunes are regarded as common property? On this
basis it should be possible to create new ‘jigs’ at will, both of an ‘Elizabethan’
kind, or thoroughly modern. This may in fact be the most valuable contribution
of the book. By detailing the steps that need to be taken in the recreation of the
original stage jig, a blueprint is provided for the construction of new versions of
these old narrative forms. Much as the basic form of the ‘folk play’ or ‘mummers
play’ lends itself to reinterpretation or the inclusion of contemporary themes, so
too does the stage jig provide a model that might be applied to a wide range of
theatrical story-telling.
There remains one conundrum, however, and that is the problem of reconciling the stage jig, as represented here, with its role on the Elizabethan stage
as a concluding farce or after-piece to the performance of the main play: ‘Dramatic jigs were thoroughly established as the usual sequel to plays, both comedies
and tragedies. Their customary placing in the afternoon’s entertainment is confirmed by innumerable contemporary references’ (page 25). When the re-creation
of Shakespearean theatrical practice in the modern reconstructed Globe was first
attempted some years ago, the plays were occasionally, I believe, followed by a ‘jig’
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of the kind described in the present volume, much to the bemusement and even
disapproval of the audience. To follow a tragedy such as Hamlet with a bawdy jig
such as Singing Simpkin, seems now so incongruous and irreverent that it is little
surprise that this idea was quickly abandoned in favour of their present practice of
having an elaborately choreographed curtain call in which all the company dances
– a ‘jig’ of a very different kind, even though much-loved by today’s audience. The
unanswered question is why Shakespeare’s audience was so different. If this book
leads to the rediscovery of how the stage jig can be presented as a highly skilled
dramatic form, executed by professional performers, then we may be in a better
position to understand its attractions to the original audience.
Bill Tuck January 2015
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